


for I am come to send fire on the earth

by tomato_greens



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Background Character Death, The Crucifixion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 19:04:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomato_greens/pseuds/tomato_greens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The worst of it was that Crowley had already received a commendation, gleaming, from Below. He had the letter tucked into his belt, hand-signed by Dagon himself––and in genuine pig’s blood, too, not even the stamp facsimile he usually employed for this type of busywork. <i>FINELY DONE</i>, the letter read, <i>THIS IS ONE FOR THE BOOKS</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for I am come to send fire on the earth

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [puokki](http://puokki.livejournal.com) during the [2012 GO Exchange](http://go-exchange.livejournal.com)!

Crowley was––Crowley was––Crowley was getting drunk. The wine wasn’t very good: it tasted more like the clay it was stored in than anything else, but Crowley was desperate enough that it didn’t matter. “Another,” he told the server, snapping his fingers. The man rolled his eyes, but Crowley was well-dressed and his coin was both good and plenty; the cup arrived, the wine unwatered. “Thankssss.”

The worst of it was that Crowley had already received a commendation, gleaming, from Below. He had the letter tucked into his belt, hand-signed by Dagon himself––and in genuine pig’s blood, too, not even the stamp facsimile he usually employed for this type of busywork. _FINELY DONE_ , the letter read, _THIS IS ONE FOR THE BOOKS_. 

Crowley felt overwhelmingly nauseated just thinking about it, the exquisite arch of the man’s abused tendons, the Cross behind him a terrible parody of his mother’s embrace. Crowley hadn’t even been in Jerusalem until the final hours––he preferred Rome, generally, because the parties were better, and he had dismissed the rumors of miracles and the growing aura of cultish devotion and even the child-killings thirty years ago as nothing more than symptoms of the weird, fitful cruelty of human boredom. He had been on his way out of the city to visit his favorite corrupt wine-merchant when he’d looked over at that spooky, skull-shaped hill and had seen him, the fractal swathe of blood down his face, the defeated slump of his muscled shoulders. He was beautiful, in a way, arresting, his brown skin shiny from sweat and patterned with scourge-marks. 

_How striking_ , Crowley had thought, _for a man so lowly as a would-be preacher_. And then the soldier had thrust his spear, and as the man looked at Crowley straight in his yellow eyes and cried out, “ _Eloi, eloi lama sabachthani!_ ” Crowley had felt within himself the gaping chasm of his own eons-old loss, the gutting realization––a second too late––that he had wandered too far into Heaven’s dark periphery. 

He had not blinked, but it had been a close thing. The man had died not too long after; watching his mother weep her keening mourning cry and cradle his flayed and broken body had been as much as Crowley could stand to see––then, the wine. Oceans and oceans of wine.

He looked up from his too-empty cup to see a familiar and disapproving frown. “Oh, bugger off,” he slurred, and drained the cup. 

“Really,” Aziraphale huffed, “you’d think you were a babe in sweets––what has gotten into you?”

“Don’t you look at me like that, you haven’t the right,” Crowley insisted, waving for the server again. “More, more, more––ahh, yesssss, thank you. Leave all of it, will you?”

“If you die on the premises, I shall make your friend pay off your debts,” the server warned, but complied. Crowley stroked the jug with his shaking fingers––he neither had nor needed any friends but the wine.

“You’re making a spectacle of yourself,” Aziraphale warned, brow furrowed. 

“I don’t care,” Crowley groaned wretchedly. “You should leave me be.”

Aziraphale sighed and reached out to take Crowley’s other hand, which was lying on the table, clenched into a fist. “Look at me, will you?” 

Crowley snatched his hand away and nearly hit himself in the mouth; he couldn’t care. “I can’t,” he hissed, “I can’t––why didn’t you––you were here, while I was––why couldn’t you have––done something––”

“It is as God willed it,” Aziraphale proclaimed, his mouth a small and disappointed moue. “This is how it must go, surely you must see that, my dear.”

“Don’t you call me that, not now,” Crowley choked. “Don’t you dare call me that when your side betrayed a man who was doing nothing but working for you––”

“People die,” Aziraphale said hotly, color high in his cheeks. “It’s what happens, Crowley, it’s––don’t get mad at _me_ , it’s as ineffable as you or I––”

Crowley felt his breath rattle in his throat. “Nothing about me is ineffable,” he thundered, pointing his finger at Aziraphale’s jugular, which was bobbing nervously up and down. “I am what I am by choice––by my choice––you haven’t any right to come in and take away the last thing your blessed father ever gave me––”

“Dear, dear,” said Aziraphale, soothing as balm, and drew him out into the street, pilfering his belt to leave a handful of coins on the table. Crowley grabbed the jug as they left, so he didn’t notice Aziraphale’s surprisingly nimble grab for the letter until they were well away from the public house. 

“That’s mine,” Crowley fumed, and reached for it, overshooting by at least a hand’s length.

Aziraphale tucked it back into his belt for him and patted Crowley’s outstretched arm. “I see now why you were distraught,” he said, a chuckle hiding somewhere in the back of his throat. “You always have had a remarkable sense for fair play.”

“That’s not––it’s not like that,” Crowley contested, but the way Aziraphale directed him to his own household was so comforting in the face of the unrestrained heat of his anger that he gave up arguing for the cool and easy direction of Aziraphale’s fingers. He couldn’t seem to let go of the wine, but Aziraphale, smiling indulgently, guided him through undressing so that he didn’t have to set it down.

“There’s a dear,” Aziraphale cooed, “now I shall lay you down to rest––and do rest, Crowley, you clearly need it so.”

Crowley covered his face with his free hand, the great empty pit inside of him receding slightly. “Thank you, angel,” he said. 

“Good boy,” Aziraphale said softly, and chucked Crowley under the chin. “Soon you’ll be right as rain, and our Arrangement can continue apace––and you’ll see that this was for the best, my dear, that this man’s suffering was just, as it shall be written––”

A cold electric spark of fear shivered down the back of Crowley’s neck and he felt, suddenly, very sober. “If you really think that, I can’t do business with the likes of _you_ ,” he said coldly, still holding the wine in front of him like a shield.

“I see,” Aziraphale said without any feeling at all, his face blank, and, snapping his fingers, disappeared. 

Crowley uncorked the jug the next day, still hiding in Aziraphale’s apartments; he had been hoping to postpone his hangover for one day more––just a little longer––but somehow, in the night, all the wine had been turned to water.


End file.
